Abstract Researchers in discourse and grammar, e.g. Givon (1979) , have identified the clause (verb plus any arguments) as the minimal unit of discourse. However, an analysis of conversational data reveals a relatively high percentage of ‘verbless’ units which occupy conversational turns and have semantic content, which would not be accounted for in the `verb plus any arguments' definition. This paper proposes a methodology to account for these units both grammatically and functionally. It also demonstrates that the occurrence and frequency of elliptical clauses is strongly correlated with patterns of turn-taking in conversations in which four or more interlocutors participate.
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